
Book 



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J: 

THE 



LIFE A^:NrD DE^TH 



ABRAHil LINCOLN. 



T H K 



LIFE AND DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



A SERMON 



PREACHED AT THE 



CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY 

PHILADELPHIA, 

< 
Sunday Morning, A^yril 23 ^ 1SG5, 



Rev. PHILLIPS liROOKS. 

/I 



PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF MEMBERS OF THE CONGREGATION. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

HENRY E. AS II MEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 

Nos. 1102 AND 1104 Sansom Street. 

18G5. 



"He chose David also his servant and took him away from the 

SHEEPFOLDS ; THAT HE MIGHT FEED JaCOB HIS PEOPLE AND IsRAEL UIS 
INHERITANCE. So HE FED THEM WITH A FAITHFUL AND TRUE HEART, 
AND RULED THEM PRUDENTLY AVITH ALL HIS POWER." Psalm Ixxviii, 

71, 72, 73. 



Here is a description of a great and good ruler — of 
the source from which God took him, of the purpose of 
his taking, and of the character which belonged to the 
rulership which he exercised. 

While I speak to you to-day, the body of the President 
who ruled this people is lying honored and loved, in our 
City. It is impossible with that sacred presence in our 
midst for me to stand and speak of the ordinary topics 
which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of him to-day ; 
and I therefore undertake to do what I had intended to 
do at some future time, to invite you to study with me 
the character of Abraham Lincoln, the impulses of his 
life, and the causes of his death. I know how hard it is 
to do it rightly, how impossible it is to do it worthily. 
But I shall speak with confidence because I speak to 
those who love him, and whose ready love will fill out 
the deficiencies in a picture which my words will weakly 
try to draw. I can only promise you to speak calmly, 



conscientiously, affectionately, and with what under- 
standing of him I can command. 

We take it for granted first of all, that there is an es- 
sential connection between Mr. Lincoln's character and 
his violent and bloody death. It is no accident, no arbi- 
trary decree of Providence. He lived as he did, and he 
died as he did, because he was what he was. The more 
we see of events the less we come to believe in any f^ite 
or destiny except the destiny of character. It will be 
our duty, then, to see what there was in the character 
of our great President that created the history of his life 
and at last produced the catastrophy of his cruel death. 
After the first trembling horror, the first outburst of in- 
dignant sorrow has grown calm, these are the questions 
which we are bound to ask and answer. 

It is not necessary for me even to sketch the biography 
of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky, fifty-six years 
ago, when Kentucky Avas a pioneer State. He lived, as 
boy and man, the hard and needy life of a backwoods- 
man, a farmer, a river boatman, and finally, by his own 
efforts at self-education, of an active, respected, influential 
citizen in the half-organized and manifold interests of a 
new and energetic community. From his boyhood up 
he lived in direct and vigorous contact with men and 
things, not as in older states and easier conditions with 
words and theories ; and both his moral convictions and 
his intellectual opinions gathered from that contact a su- 
preme degree of that character by which men knew 



5 

him — that character which is the most distinctive pos- 
session of the best American nature — that almost indis- 
cribable quality which we call in general clearness or 
truth, and Avhich appears in the physical ■ structure as 
health, in the moral constitution as honesty, in the mental 
structure as sagacity, and in the region of active life as 
practicalness. This one character, with many sides all 
shaped by the same essential force and testifying to the 
same inner influences, was what was powerful in him 
and decreed for him the life he was to live and the death 
he was to die. We must take no smaller view than this 
of what he was. Even his physical conditions are not 
to be forgotten in making up his character. We make 
too little always of the physical ; certainly we make too 
little of it here if we lose out of sight the strength and 
muscular activity, the power of doing and enduring, which 
the backwoods-boy inherited from generations of hard- 
living ancestors, and appropriated for his own by a long 
discipline of bodily toil. He brought to the solution of 
the question of labor in this country, not merely a mind 
but a body thoroughly in sympathy with labor, full of 
the culture of labor, bearing witness to the dignity and 
excellence of work in every muscle that w^ork had 
toughened and every sense that work had made clear 
and true. He could not have brought the mind for his 
task so perfectly, unless he had first brought the body 
whose rugged and stubborn health was always contra- 
dicting to liim the false theories of labor, and always 



6 

asserting the true. Who shall say that even with David 
the son of Jesse, there was not a physical as well as a 
spiritual culture in the struggle with the lion and the 
bear which occurred among the sheepfolds, out of which 
God took him to be the ruler of his people. 

As to the moral and mental powers which distinguished 
him, all embraceable under this general description of 
clearness or truth, the most remarkable thing in the 
way in which they blend with one another, so that it is 
next to impossible to examine them in separation. A 
great many people have discussed very crudely whether 
Abraham Lincoln was an intelligent man or not ; as if 
intellect were a thing always of the same sort, which you 
could percipitate from the other constituents of a man's 
nature and Aveight by itself, and compare by pounds and 
ounces in this man with another. The fact is that in all 
the simplest characters the line between the mental and 
moral natures is always vague and indistinct. They 
run together, and in their best combinations you are un- 
able to discriminate in the wisdom which is their result, 
how much is moral and how much is intellectual. You 
are unable to tell whether in the wise acts and words 
which issue from such a life there is more of the righteous- 
ness that comes of a clear conscience or of the sagacity 
that comes of a clear brain. In more complex characters 
and under more complex conditions, the moral and the 
mental lives come to be less healthily combined. They 
cooperate, they help each other less. They come even 



to stand over against each other as antagonists ; till we 
have that vague but most melancholy notion which per- 
vades the life of all elaborate civilization, that goodness 
and greatness, as we call them, are not to be looked for 
together, till we expect to see and so do see a feeble and 
narrow conscientiousness on the one hand and a bad un- 
principled intelligence on the other, dividing the suf- 
frages of men. 

It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lincoln's, 
that they reunite what God has joined together and man 
has put asunder. In him was vindicated the greatness 
of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness. The 
twain were one flesh. Not one of all the multitudes who 
stood and looked up to him for direction with such a 
loving and im2;)licit trust can tell you to-day whether the 
wise judgments that he gave came most from a strong 
head or a sound heart. If you ask them they are puz- 
zled. There are men as good as he, but they do bad 
things. There are men as intelligent as he, but they do 
foolish things. In him goodness and intelligence com- 
bined and made their best result of wisdom. For perfect 
truth consists not merely in the right constituents of 
character, but in their right and intimate conjunction. 
This union of the mental and moral into a life of admir- 
able simplicity is what we most admire in children, but 
in them it is unsettled and unpractical. But when it is 
preserved into a manhood, deepened into reliability and 
maturity, it is that glorified childlikeness, that high and 



8 

reverend simplicity which shames and baffles the most 
accomplished astuteness, and is chosen by God to fill his 
purposes when he needs a ruler for his people of faithful 
and true heart, such as he had who was our President. 

Another evident quality of such a character as this, 
will be its freshness or newness, so to speak. Its fresh- 
ness, or readiness — call it what you will — its ability 
to take up new duties and do them in a new way will 
result of necessity from its truth and clearness. The 
simple natures and forces will always be the most pliant 
ones. Water bends and shapes itself to any channel. 
Air folds and adapts itself to each new figure. They are 
the simplest and the most infinitely active things in na- 
ture. So this nature, in very virtue of its simplicity, must 
be also free, always fitting itself to each new need. It 
will always start from the most fundamental and eternal 
conditions, and work in the straightest even although 
they be the newest ways to the present prescribed pur- 
pose. In one word it must be broad and independent 
and radical. So that freedom and radicalness in the 
character of Abraham Lincoln were not separate qualities, 
but the necessary results of his simplicity and childlike- 
ness and truth. 

Here then we have some conception of the man. Out 
of this character came the life which we admire and the 
death which we lament to-day. He was called in that 
character to that life and death. It was just the nature, 
as you see, which a new nation such as ours ought to 



9 

produce. All the conditions of his birth, his youth, his 
manhood, which made him what he was, were not irregu- 
lar and exceptional, but were the normal conditions of a 
new and simple country. Ilis pioneer home in Indiana, 
was a type of the pioneer land in which he lived. If 
ever there was a man who was a part of the time and 
country he lived in this was he. The same simple re- 
spect for labor won in the school of work and incorpo- 
rated into blood and muscle ; the same unassuming loyalty 
to the simple virtues of temperance and industry and 
integrity ; the same sagacious judgment wdiich had 
learned to be quick-eyed and quick-brained in the con- 
stant presence of emergency ; the same direct and clear 
thought about things, social, political and religious, that 
was in him supremely, wms in the people he was sent to 
rule. Surely, wdth such a type-man for ruler, there would 
seem to be but a smooth and even road over which he 
might lead the people whose character he represented 
into the new region of national happiness and comfort 
and usefulness, for which that character had been de- 
signed. 

But then we come to the beginning of all trouble. 
Abraham Lincoln was the type-man of the country, but 
not of the Avhole country. This character which we have 
been trying to describe was the character of an American 
under the discipline of freedom. There was another 
American character which had been developed under the 
influence of slavery. There was no one American char- 



10 

acter embracing the land. There were two characters, 
with impulses of irrepressible and deadly conflict. This 
citizen whom we have been honoring and praising re- 
presented one. The whole great scheme with which he 
was ultimately brought in conflict, and which has finally 
killed him, rej)resented the other. Beside this nature, 
true and fresh and new, there was another nature false 
and effete and old. The one nature found itself in a new" 
world, and set itself to discover the new ways for the 
new duties that were given it. The other nature, full of 
the false pride of blood, set itself to reproduce in a new 
world the institutions and the spirit of the old, to build 
anew the structure of a feudalism which had been corrupt 
in its own days, and which had been left far behind by 
the advancing conscience and needs of the progressing 
race. The one nature magnified labor, the other nature 
depreciated and despised it. The one honored the laborer 
and the other scorned him. The one was simple and 
direct. The other complex, full of sophistries and self- 
excuses. The one was free to look all that claimed to 
be truth in the face, and separate the error from the 
truth that miiiht be in it. The other did not dare to in- 
vestigate because its own established prides and systems 
were dearer to it than the truth itself, and so even truth 
went about in it doing the work of error. The one was 
ready to state broad principles, of the brotherhood of 
man. the universal fatherhood and justice of God, how- 
ever imperfectly it might realize them in practice. The 



11 

other denied even the principles, and so dug deep and laid 
below its special sins the broad foundation of a consistent 
acknowledged sinfulness. In a word, one nature was 
full of the influences of Freedom, the other nature was 
full of the influences of Slavery. 

In general these two regions of our national life were 
separated by a geographical boundary. One was the 
spirit of the North, the other was the spirit of the South. 
But the Southern nature was b}' no means all a Southern 
thing. There it had an organized established form, a 
certain, definite, established institution about which it 
clustered. Here, lacking that advantage, it lived in less 
expressive ways and so lived more weakly. There, there 
was the horrible sacrament of slavery, the outward and 
visible sign round which the inward and spiritual temper 
gathered and kept itself alive. But who doubts that 
among us the spirit of slavery lived and throve ? Its 
formal existence had been swept away from one state 
after another, partly on conscientious, partly on economi- 
cal grounds, but its spirit was here, in every sympathy 
that Northern winds carried to the listening ear of the 
Southern slaveholder, and in every oppression of the 
weak by the strong, every proud assumption of idleness 
over labor which echoed the music of Southern life back 
to us. Here in our midst lived that worse and falser 
nature, side by side with the true and better nature 
which God meant should be the nature of Americans, 
and of which he was shaping out the type and champion 
in his chosen David of the sheepfolds. 



12 

Here then we have the two. The history of our 
country for many years is the history of how these two 
elements of American life approached collision. They 
wrought their separate reactions on each other. Men de- 
bate and quarrel even now about the rise of Northern 
abolitionism, about whether the Northern abolitionists 
were right or wrong, whether they did harm or good. 
How vain the quarrel is ! It was inevitable. It was 
inevitable in the nature of things that two such natures 
living here together should be set violently against each 
other. It is inevitable, till man be far more unfeeling and 
untrue to his convictions than he has always been, that 
a great wrong asserting itself vehemently should arouse 
to no less vehement assertion the opposing right. The 
only wonder is that there was not more of it. The only 
wonder is that so few were swept away to take by an 
impulse they could not resist their stand of hatred to 
the wicked institution. The only wonder is that only 
one brave, reckless man came forth to cast himself, almost 
single-handed, with a hopeless hope, against the proud 
power that he hated, and trust to the influence of a soul 
marching on into the history of his countrymen to stir 
them to a vindication of the truth he loved. At any 
rate, whether the abolitionists were wrong or right, there 
grew up about their violence, as there always will about 
the extremism of extreme reformers, a great mass of 
feeling, catching their spirit and asserting it firmly 
though in more moderate degrees and methods. About 



the nueloiis of Abolitionism grewlip u groat American 
Anti-slavery determination, which at last gathered 
strength enough to take its stand, to insist upon the 
checking and limiting the extension of the power of 
slavery, and to put the type-man whom God had been 
preparing for the task, before the world to do the work 
on which it had resolved. Then came discontent, seces- 
sion, treason. The two American natures long advancing 
to encounter, met at last and a whole country yet tremb- 
ling with the shock, bears witness how terrible the meet- 
ing was. 

Thus 1 have tried briefly to trace out the gradual course 
by wdiich God brought the character which he designed 
to be the controlling character of this new world into dis- 
tinct collision with the hostile character which it was to 
destroy and absorb, and set it in the person of its type- 
man in the seat of highest power. The character formed 
under the discipline of Freedom, and the character formed 
under the discipline of Slavery, developed all their dif- 
ference and met in hostile conflict when this war began. 
Notice, it was not only in what he did and was towards 
the slave, it was in all he did and was everywhere that 
we accept Mr. Lincoln's character as the true result of 
our free life and institutions. Nowhere else could have 
come forth that genuine love of the people, which in him . 
no one could suspect of being either the cheap flattery of 
the demagogue or the abstract philanthropy of the phi- 
losopher, which made our President, while he lived, the 



14 

centre of a great household hmd, and when he died so 
cruelly, made every humblest household thrill with a 
sense of personal bereavement wdiich the death of rulers 
is not apt to bring. Nowhere else than out of the life of 
freedom could have come that personal unselfishness and 
generosity which made so gracious a part of this good 
man's character. How many soldiers feel yet the pres- 
sure of a strong hand that clasped theirs once as they 
lay sick and w^eak in the dreary hospital. How many 
ears will never lose the thrill of some kind word he spoke 
— he who could speak so kindly to promise a kindness 
that always matched his word. How often he surprised 
the land with a clemency which made even those who 
questioned his policy love him the more for what they 
called his weakness ; seeing how the man in whom God 
had most embodied the discipline of Freedom not only 
could not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant. In the 
heartiness of his mirth and his enjoyment of simple joys ; 
in the directness and shrewdness of perception which 
constituted his Avit; in the nntired, undiscouraged faith 
in human nature which he always kept; and perhaps 
above all in the plainness and quiet unostentatious ear- 
nestness and independence of his rehgious life, in his hum- 
ble love and trust of God — in all, it w\as a character such 
as only Freedom knows how to make. 

Now it was in this character rather than in any mere 
political position that the fitness of Mr. Lincoln to stand 
forth in the struggle of the two American natures really 



15 

lay. We are told tliiit lie did not eoine to the Presiden- 
tial chair pledged to the abolition of Slavery, When 
will we learn that Avith all true men it is not what they 
intend to do, but it is what the qualities of their natures 
bind them to do that determines their career? The 
President came to his power full of the blood, strong- in 
the strength of Freedom. He came there free and hating 
slavery. He came there, leaving on record words like 
these spoken three years before and never contradicted. 
He had said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. 
I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently, 
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to 
be dissolved. I do not expect the house to tall; but I 
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all 
one thing or all the other." When the question came he 
knew which thing he meant that it should be. His 
whole nature settled that question for him. With such 
a man, intentions far ahead meant little. Such a man 
must always live as he used to say he lived, (and was 
blamed for saying it) "controlled by events not controlling 
them." And with a reverent and clear mind to be con- 
trolled b}' events, means to be controlled by God. For 
such a man there was no hesitation when God brought 
him up face to face with Slavery and put the sword into 
his hand and said, "Strike it down dead." He was a 
willing servant then. If ever the face of a man writing 
solemn words glowed with a solemn joy, it must have 
been the face of Abraham Lincoln, as he bent over the 



16 

page where the EmnnciiDation Proclamation of 18G8 was 
growing into shape, and giving manhood and freedom as 
he wrote it to hundreds of thousands of his fellowmen. 
Here was a work in which his whole nature could rejoice. 
Here was an act that crowned the whole culture of his 
life. All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the 
free youth upon the farm, tlie free manhood in the hon- 
orable citizen's employments — all his freedom gathered 
and completed itself in this. And as the swarthy multi- 
tudes came in ragged, and tired, and hungry, and igno- 
rant, but free forever from anything but the memorial 
scars of the fetters and the whip, singing rude songs in 
which the new triumph of freedom struggled and heaved 
below the sad melody that had been shaped for bondage; 
as in their camps and hovels there grew up to their half- 
superstitious eyes the image of a great Father almost 
more than man to wliom they owed their freedom ; were 
they not half right? For it was not to one man, driven 
by stress of policy, or swept off by a whim of pity that 
the noble act was due. It was to the American nature, 
long kept by God in his own intentions till his time 
should come, at last emerging into sight and power, 
and bound up and embodied in this best and most Ameri- 
can of all Americans, to whom we and those poor fright- 
ened slaves at last might look up together and love to call 
him with one voice, our Father. 

Thus, we have seen something of what the character 
of Mr. Lincoln was, and how it issued in the life he lived. 



17 

It remains for us to see how it resulted also in the ter- 
rible death which has laid his murdered body here in our 
town among lamenting multitudes to-day. It is not a 
hard question, though it is sad to answer. We saw the 
two natures, the nature of Slavery and the nature of 
Freedom at last set against each other, come at last to 
open war. Both fought, fought long, fought bravely; 
but each, as was perfectly natural, fought with the tools 
and in the ways which its own character had made fa- 
miliar to it. The character of Slavery was brutal, bar- 
barous and treacherous, and so the whole history of the 
slave power during the war has been full of ways of 
warfare brutal, barbarous, and treacherous beyond any- 
thing that men bred in freedom could have been driven 
to by the most hateful passions. It is not to be mar- 
velled at. It is not to be set down as the special sin of 
the war. It goes back beyond that. It is the sin of the 
system. It is the barbarism of Slavery. When Slavery 
went to war to save its life, what wonder if its barbarism 
grew barbarous a hundred-fold. 

One would be attempting a task which once was al- 
most hopeless, but which now is only needless, if he set 
himself to convince a Northern congregation that Slavery 
was a barbarian institution. It would be hardly more 
necessary to try to prove how its barbarism has shown 
itself during this war. The same spirit which was blind 
to the wickedness of breaking sacred ties, of separating 
man and wife, of beating women till they dropped down 



18 

dead, of organizing licentiousness and sin into commer- 
cial systems, of forbidding knowledge and j)rotecting it- 
self with ignorance, of putting on its arms and riding out 
to steal a State at the beleaguered ballot-box away from 
Freedom — in one word (for its simplest definition is its 
worst dishonor), the spirit that gave man the ownership 
in man in time of peace has found out yet more terrible 
barbarisms for the time of war. It has hewed and burned 
the bodies of the dead. It has starved and mutilated 
its helpless prisoners. It has dealt by truth, not as men 
will in a time of excitement lightly and with frequent 
violations, but with a cool, and deliberate, and systematic 
contempt. It has sent its agents into Northern towns 
to fire peaceful hotels where hundreds of peaceful men 
and women slept. It has undermined the prisons where 
its victims starved and made all ready to blow with one 
blast their wretched life away. It has delighted in the 
lowest and basest scurrility even on the highest and most 
honorable lips. It has corrupted the graciousness of 
women and killed out the truth of men. 

I do not count up the terrible catalogue because I like 
to, nor because I wish to stir your hearts to passion. 
Even now, you and I have no right to indulge in 
personal hatred to the men who did these things. 
But we are not doing right by ourselves, by the President 
that we have lost, or by God who had a purpose in our 
losing him, unless we know thoroughly that it was this 
same spirit which we have seen to be a tyrant in peace 
and a savage in war, that has crowned itself with the 



19 

working of this final woe. It was conflict of the two 
American natures, the false and the true. It was Slavery 
and Freedom that met in their two representatives, the 
assassin and the President. And the victim of the last 
desjDerate struggle of the dying Slavery lies dead to-day 
in Independence Hall. 

Solemnly in the sight of God, I charge this murder 
where it belongs, on Slavery. I dare not stand here in 
His sight, and before Him or you speak doubtful and 
double-meaning words of vague repentance, as if we had 
kiUed our President. We have sins enough, but we have 
not done this sin, save as by weak concessions and timid 
compromises we have let the spirit of Slavery grow 
strong and ripe for such a deed. In the barbarism of 
Slavery the foul act and its foul method had their birth. 
By all the goodness that there was in him; by all the 
love we had for him, (and who shall tell how great it 
was?) by all the sorrow that has burdened down this 
desolate and dreadful week, I charge his murder where 
it belongs, on Slavery. I bid you to remember where 
the charge belongs, to write it on the door-posts of your 
mourning houses, to teach it to your wondering children, 
to give it to the history of these times, that all times to 
come may hate and dread the sin that killed our noblest 
President. 

If ever anything were clear, this is the clearest. Is 
there the man alive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln 
was shot just for himself; that it was that one man for 
whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest, most 



20 

indulgent man that ever ruled a State ! The man who 
knew not how to speak a w^ord of harshness, or how to 
make a foe ! Was it he for whom the murderer lurked 
with a mere private hate ? It was not he but what he 
stood for. It was Law and Liberty ; it was Government 
and Freedom against which the hate gathered, and the 
treacherous shot was fired. And I know not how the 
crime of him who shoots at Law and Liberty in the 
crowded glare of a great theatre differs from theirs who 
have levelled their aim n.t the same great Beings from 
behind a thousand ambuscades and on a hundred battle- 
fields of this long war. Every General in the field and 
every false citizen in our midst at home, Avho has plotted 
and labored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the 
Republic, is brother to him who did this deed. The 
American nature, the American truths, of which our 
President was the annointed and supreme embodiment, 
have been embodied in multitudes of heroes who marched 
unknown and fell unnoticed in our ranks. For them, 
just as for him, character decreed a life and a death. 
The blood of all of them I charge on one same head. 
Slavery armed with Treason was their murderer. 

Men point out to us the absurdity and folly of this 
awful crime. Again and again we hear men say '' It was 
the worst thing for themselves they could have done. 
They have shot a representative man, and the cause he 
represented grows stronger and sterner by his death. 
Can it be that so wise a devil was so foolish here ? Must 
it not have been the act of one poor madman, born and 



21 

nursed in his one reckless brain?" My friends, let 
us understand this matter. It was a foolish act. Its 
folly was only equalled by its wickedness. It was a 
foolish act; but when did sin begin to be wise? When 
did wickedness learn wisdom? When did the fool stop 
saying in his heart "There is no God," and acting god- 
lessly in the absurdity of its impiety? The cause that 
Abraham Lincoln died for shall grow stronger by his 
death; stronger and sterner. Stronger to set its pillars 
deep into the structure of our nation's life; sterner to 
execute the justice of the Lord upon his enemies. 
Stronger to spread its arms and grasp our whole land 
into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poor ghost of 
slavery out of our haunted homes. But while we feel 
the folly of this act, let not its folly hide its wickedness. 
It was the wickedness of Slavery putting on a foolish- 
ness for which its wickedness and that alone is responsi- 
ble, that robbed the nation of a President and the people 
of a father. And remember this, that the folly of the 
Slave power in striking the representative of Freedom, 
and thinking that thereby it killed Freedom itself, is 
only a folly that we shaU echo if we dare to think that 
in punishing the Representatives of Slavery who did this 
deed, we are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing 
armies and hanging traitors, imperatively as justice and 
necessity may demand them both, are not the killing of 
the Spirit out of which they sprang. The traitor must 
die because he has committed treason. The murderer must 
fhe because he has committed murder. Slavery must 



22 

die because out of it and it alone, came forth the treason 
of the traitor and the murder of the murderer. Do not 
say that it is dead. It is not, while its essential spirit lives. 
While one man counts another man his born inferior for 
the color of his skin, while both in North and South 
prejudices and practices, which the law cannot touch, 
but which God hates, keep alive in our people's hearts 
the spirit of the old iniquity, it is not dead. The new 
American nature must supplant the old. We must grow 
like our President in his truth, his independence, his re- 
ligion, and his wide humanity. Then the character by 
which he died shall be in us, and by it we shall live. 
Then Peace shall come that knows no War, and Law 
that knows no Treason, and full of his spirit, a grateful 
land shall gather round his grave, and in the daily psalm 
of prosperous and righteous living, thank God forever for 
his Life and Death. 

So let him lie here in our midst to-day, and let our 
people go and bend with solemn thoughtfulness and look 
upon his face and read the lessons of his burial. As he 
paused here on his journey from his western home and 
told us what by the help of God he meant to do, so let 
him pause upon his way back to his western grave and 
tell us with a silence more eloquent than words how 
bravely, how truly by the strength of God he did it. 
God brought him up as he brought David up from the 
sheepfolds to feed Jacob, his people and Israel his in- 
heritance. He came up in earnestness and faith and he 
goes back in triumph. As he pauses here to-day, and 



from his cold lips bids us bear witness how he has met 
the duty that was laid on him, what can we say out of 
our full hearts but this — ''lie fed them with a faithful 
and true heart and ruled them prudently with all his 
power." The Shepherd of tJic People! that old name that 
the best rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it 
like this dead President of ours? He fed ii3 faithfully 
and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in 
doubt, with inspiration w^hen we sometimes faltered, with 
caution when we ^vould be rash, with calm, clear, trust- 
ful cheerfulness through many an hour Avhen our hearts 
were dark. He fed hungry souls all over the country with 
sympathy and consolation. He spread before the whole 
land feasts of great duty and devotion and patriotism 
on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, 
solid truths. He taught us the sacredness of govern- 
ment, the wickedness of treason. He made our souls 
glad and vigorous with the love of Liberty that was in 
his. He showed us how to love truth and yet be charit- 
able — how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not 
creasure one personal injury or insult. He fed all his 
people from the highest to the lowest, from the most 
privileged down to the most enslaved. Best of all, he 
fed us with a reverent and genuine religion. He spread 
before us the love and fear of God just in that shape in 
which we need them most, and out of his faithful ser- 
vice of a higher Master who of us has not taken and 
eaten and grown strong. " He fed them with a faithful 
and true heart." Yes, till the last. For at the last, 



■^ 



24 

behold him standing with hand reached out to feed the 
South with Mercy and the North with Charity, and the 
whole land with Peace, when the Lord who had sent 
him called him and his work was done. 

He stood once on the battle-field of our own State, 
and said of the brave men who had saved it words as 
noble as any countryman of ours ever spoke Let us 
stand in the country he has saved, and which is to be 
his grave and monument, and say of Abraham Lincoln 
what he said of the soldiers who had died at Gettysburg. 
He stood there with their graves before him, and these 
are the words he said : " We cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 
men who struggled here have consecrated it far beyond 
our power to add or detract. The world will little note 
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never 
forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather 
to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who 
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather 
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us, that from these honored dead we take increased 
devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
Government of the people, by the people and for the 
people shall not perish from the earth." 

May God make us worthy of the memory of Abraham 
Lincoln. 






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